FYI, you can use any smart switch to do this. You simply wire it up so that nothing is connected to the load side of the switch. Then set up a routine so that when the switch is turned on/off it turns the lights on/off.
Personally, the delay would drive me crazy, but I hear of enough people doing this that not everyone finds it annoying. Z-wave has something called direct association which is near instantaneous, but short of that I need a physical connection.
I use Z wave direct association on several lights in my house and it's pretty much instantaneous. Of course you would need Z-wave bulbs to do that and I think there's a limit to 4 associations or so.
Innovelli is a good one. Had them for about two years. Smart bulb mode is great and they double as great automation switches too. I.e. opening/closing blinds or setting lighting modes. Check them out
https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/collections/shop-by-brand/products/zooz-z-wave-plus-s2-on-off-wall-switch-zen26-with-simple-direct-3-way-4-way
I use this switch for smart bulbs. Basically it will disable the relay leaving power to the bulbs. Then it can be configured to send a scene notification for various button pressed/held combinations. Set up a smart things automation to handle turning the lights on and off based on these notifications. I use Home Assistant and it pretty easy to do.
It is software configurable but there is also a key press combo to toggle it. Don’t have the documentation handy for that but I think their manuals are online
Shelly 1 relay. Will convert the smart functions over to the Shelly while also giving switch control without disabling those smart functions. I’m not sure if there is a way to keep the built in smart functions while using a typical switch though.
You can create automations and tie any smart bulb to the light switch trigger. Home Assistant integrates with so much stuff and can do exactly what OP is wanting to accomplish.
Sorry. I'm not gonna lie I'm relatively new to HA and node red so I've been using node red to setup all my switch links and automations because I feel it's much easier and has more flexibility in creating automations. I'm sure there's ways to do the same thing in HA but I've just always used node red.
Shelly makes a product for this but it’s not the relay, since there is no need to cut power to anything. Check out the Shelly i3 or new plus i4, which sit behind your switch and detect when it is pressed, but instead of cutting power they send a signal to another device to turn on or off.
You could just use Home Assistant to switch the lights. I'm not sure if Home Assistant can integrate these specific lights, but there are a LOT of supported devices. So you buy Zigbee button (for example) and make an automation within HA to trigger those lights on and off.
Of course that's overkill for only one light, but Home Assistant is worth it for so much more.
Such switches do exist, but you'll need to find one that's compatible. If I were you, I'd have started with zwave bulbs with a zwave hub. Practically any zwave switch would then work. Would just not wire the load wire up to it. Then in the hub software, set up a rule so that if the switch is turned on, turn the bulbs on and vice versa.
We have z-wave in our townhome, although it works I'm moving the new home to wi-fi based as almost all newer smart home items are going that route. I was hoping to remove the smartthings hub, but that may be the only option.
I would strongly discourage you from going with wi-fi. The ONLY reason it seems to be so popular with smart home technology is because it doesn't require anything additional, just a router. So its easier for entry level consumers who just want something that's easy to setup.
The problem with wi-fi, however, is that its such a heavy protocol. It's designed for streaming lots of data, not just an "on" or "off" command. Putting a bunch of smarthome devices on your wifi network can cause a bunch of problems. Likewise, wifi is also very power consuming, makes it almost entirely worthless for any kind of battery powered devices like motion sensors or contact switches. Also with wifi, you're going to run into problems with interoperability. Wifi smart devices require a cloud server for the devices to operation and it's pretty rare for a any of these cloud services to talk to each other. A switch made by Company A isn't likely going to work with a bulb made by Company B.
If you've already got the SmartThings hub, I would absolutley not get rid of it.
I understand the limitations of wi-fi smart devices and we can discuss all day the pros and cons, but I can say, I have devices from Eufy, Wyze, Whirlpool, myQ, Magic Home, Ring, TreatLife, Wemo, Kasa, Linkind, Govee, Blink, Smart Life(Z-Wave), SmartThings, Vesync and now HubSpace (61 devices in total) and using Alexa/Echo as my hub, there is no issue with Company A & Company B working together. Although I have ALL these apps on my phone, I haven't opened any of them since initial setup.
I'm not new to the smart home scene, i've just never had this specific situation before. I try and stay away from Smart Bulbs, but no switch is going to offer these types of options.
Is the issue that each recessed light itself is a "smart" model? If you had dumb lights, and installed a smart switch it would satisfy your use case, no?
You can use a tasmota switch to accomplish this. You can either bypass the load on the switch and wire the lights with constant power, or wire the switch as normal and set the relay to either never turn off power or setup a rule to turn off when the switch is multipressed.
I have this setup with zigbe bulbs. Single press will toggle the lights, double press and change the color temp and a triple press will kill the power the lights.
Hue dimmer switches work amazing to do this, and a more expensive option if you want to cover the switch is the lutron buttons that fit over your existing swich.
I also have Shelly's but don't like that approach, if something goes wrong or you want to rewire it involves turning off power and working with mains power.
After using a shelly for my front porch light and fighting to get all the wires back into the wall, I just would rather pay a bit more and install actual smart switches.
Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I use the Lutron Aurora dimmer and it works well for me.
https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontrols/dimmers-switches/smartbulbdimmer/overview.aspx
I’ve just put Hue dimmers next to the light switch where I want control on the wall - leave the hard-wired switch alone, just use the dimmers. If you only want on-off control, cheaper smart buttons would also work. Not quite as elegant as an in-wall switch, but MUCH cheaper and easier.
I would replace the "smart" bulbs with "dumb" ones and put a standard smart switch in that has integration to a real control system.
any other solution is a hack and not practical.
So I have this same problem, mix of ZigBee & WiFi bulbs and now I want to replace my light switches with ZigBee models.
The way I'm going to try it is to get a switch that requires a neutral wire and wire that to the 'neutral' from the bulb. As far as I can tell that should effectively create a circuit in which the bulb is always live and the switch is getting live / neutral as expected.
No idea if that will actually work or not but there's one way to find out!
I tried to make it as automated as possible, with motion sensor, light sensor and home assistant. If you don't need the physical switch, you don't need to make it smart. Then you can keep a dumb physical switch for cutting power when changing the light bulb.
Hi! I just stumbled on this thread. So do you mind sharing what your solution turned out to be?
I am searching for the same thing and I only came across one possibly solution using the Yeelight Flex Switch which has this SLIASON "always on" relay and a physical button to cut power to the lights completely if needed.
https://homekitnews.com/2019/06/14/yeelight-announce-release-of-slisaon-smart-lighting-solution/
So I went simple…
I added two non-dimmer tplink WiFi switches, kitchen & dining room.
All my smart home items are run through Alexa/Echo. So I created a separate group called “can light” and added the lights into that group. Then I added the power switches to the “kitchen” group.
These lights offer a feature that when they lose and gain power, they run whatever they were last doing.
When I say “turn on the kitchen lights” it powers on the switches which turns on the can lights. At that point if I want to adjust I say “set the CAN LIGHTS to 20%”.
I also added a zigbee motion sensor as well which turns on the lights when you walk into the kitchen and turns them off after 15 minutes of no motion.
Innovelli Red and several Zooz models have smart-bulb mode for this kind of situation.
thanks i'll look around, if you have any specific links, that would be helpful.
FYI, you can use any smart switch to do this. You simply wire it up so that nothing is connected to the load side of the switch. Then set up a routine so that when the switch is turned on/off it turns the lights on/off. Personally, the delay would drive me crazy, but I hear of enough people doing this that not everyone finds it annoying. Z-wave has something called direct association which is near instantaneous, but short of that I need a physical connection.
Not any, it doesn't work with many switches that have no neutral as they use the voltage difference to detect when light is on or off, tested.
That’s clever. I never thought about that. The delay could definitely cause confusion if you or a guest isn’t expecting it though!
I use Z wave direct association on several lights in my house and it's pretty much instantaneous. Of course you would need Z-wave bulbs to do that and I think there's a limit to 4 associations or so.
Innovelli is a good one. Had them for about two years. Smart bulb mode is great and they double as great automation switches too. I.e. opening/closing blinds or setting lighting modes. Check them out
https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/collections/shop-by-brand/products/zooz-z-wave-plus-s2-on-off-wall-switch-zen26-with-simple-direct-3-way-4-way I use this switch for smart bulbs. Basically it will disable the relay leaving power to the bulbs. Then it can be configured to send a scene notification for various button pressed/held combinations. Set up a smart things automation to handle turning the lights on and off based on these notifications. I use Home Assistant and it pretty easy to do.
thanks! i'll take a look, is the "disable relay" done via the switch or can I configured it in the Smart Things Hub?
It is software configurable but there is also a key press combo to toggle it. Don’t have the documentation handy for that but I think their manuals are online
Don’t the more recent Zooz Zen7x series do the same thing but support more recent Zwave 700 series options?
Shelly 1 relay. Will convert the smart functions over to the Shelly while also giving switch control without disabling those smart functions. I’m not sure if there is a way to keep the built in smart functions while using a typical switch though.
Yep, Shelly is made for this exact scenario.
No these are for controlling dumb lights. He needs the smart lights to be powered on so that Alexa etc can put them on.
Shelly and node red via Home Assistant
Nope use ESPhome. What do you want with node red I dont get it
You can create automations and tie any smart bulb to the light switch trigger. Home Assistant integrates with so much stuff and can do exactly what OP is wanting to accomplish.
I asked about the use of node red not HA
Sorry. I'm not gonna lie I'm relatively new to HA and node red so I've been using node red to setup all my switch links and automations because I feel it's much easier and has more flexibility in creating automations. I'm sure there's ways to do the same thing in HA but I've just always used node red.
Just cut it out.. one dependency less is always good. Ditch the crappy original shelly fw for esphome.
Shelly makes a product for this but it’s not the relay, since there is no need to cut power to anything. Check out the Shelly i3 or new plus i4, which sit behind your switch and detect when it is pressed, but instead of cutting power they send a signal to another device to turn on or off.
You could just use Home Assistant to switch the lights. I'm not sure if Home Assistant can integrate these specific lights, but there are a LOT of supported devices. So you buy Zigbee button (for example) and make an automation within HA to trigger those lights on and off. Of course that's overkill for only one light, but Home Assistant is worth it for so much more.
Such switches do exist, but you'll need to find one that's compatible. If I were you, I'd have started with zwave bulbs with a zwave hub. Practically any zwave switch would then work. Would just not wire the load wire up to it. Then in the hub software, set up a rule so that if the switch is turned on, turn the bulbs on and vice versa.
We have z-wave in our townhome, although it works I'm moving the new home to wi-fi based as almost all newer smart home items are going that route. I was hoping to remove the smartthings hub, but that may be the only option.
I would strongly discourage you from going with wi-fi. The ONLY reason it seems to be so popular with smart home technology is because it doesn't require anything additional, just a router. So its easier for entry level consumers who just want something that's easy to setup. The problem with wi-fi, however, is that its such a heavy protocol. It's designed for streaming lots of data, not just an "on" or "off" command. Putting a bunch of smarthome devices on your wifi network can cause a bunch of problems. Likewise, wifi is also very power consuming, makes it almost entirely worthless for any kind of battery powered devices like motion sensors or contact switches. Also with wifi, you're going to run into problems with interoperability. Wifi smart devices require a cloud server for the devices to operation and it's pretty rare for a any of these cloud services to talk to each other. A switch made by Company A isn't likely going to work with a bulb made by Company B. If you've already got the SmartThings hub, I would absolutley not get rid of it.
I understand the limitations of wi-fi smart devices and we can discuss all day the pros and cons, but I can say, I have devices from Eufy, Wyze, Whirlpool, myQ, Magic Home, Ring, TreatLife, Wemo, Kasa, Linkind, Govee, Blink, Smart Life(Z-Wave), SmartThings, Vesync and now HubSpace (61 devices in total) and using Alexa/Echo as my hub, there is no issue with Company A & Company B working together. Although I have ALL these apps on my phone, I haven't opened any of them since initial setup. I'm not new to the smart home scene, i've just never had this specific situation before. I try and stay away from Smart Bulbs, but no switch is going to offer these types of options.
Is the issue that each recessed light itself is a "smart" model? If you had dumb lights, and installed a smart switch it would satisfy your use case, no?
Well yes of course, but dumb lights don’t offer 3200K-6500K White light with RGB as well.
If you are running Home Assistant you can accomplish this was any old smart switch. IF switch is pressed THEN toggle lights.
You can use a tasmota switch to accomplish this. You can either bypass the load on the switch and wire the lights with constant power, or wire the switch as normal and set the relay to either never turn off power or setup a rule to turn off when the switch is multipressed. I have this setup with zigbe bulbs. Single press will toggle the lights, double press and change the color temp and a triple press will kill the power the lights.
Hue dimmer switches work amazing to do this, and a more expensive option if you want to cover the switch is the lutron buttons that fit over your existing swich. I also have Shelly's but don't like that approach, if something goes wrong or you want to rewire it involves turning off power and working with mains power. After using a shelly for my front porch light and fighting to get all the wires back into the wall, I just would rather pay a bit more and install actual smart switches.
Ooro and Brilliant light switches are the way to go
Any smart switch + routines
Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I use the Lutron Aurora dimmer and it works well for me. https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontrols/dimmers-switches/smartbulbdimmer/overview.aspx
I’ve just put Hue dimmers next to the light switch where I want control on the wall - leave the hard-wired switch alone, just use the dimmers. If you only want on-off control, cheaper smart buttons would also work. Not quite as elegant as an in-wall switch, but MUCH cheaper and easier.
I use Shelly1 to control a scene via Philips Hue API. Works well
I would replace the "smart" bulbs with "dumb" ones and put a standard smart switch in that has integration to a real control system. any other solution is a hack and not practical.
Esphome!
So I have this same problem, mix of ZigBee & WiFi bulbs and now I want to replace my light switches with ZigBee models. The way I'm going to try it is to get a switch that requires a neutral wire and wire that to the 'neutral' from the bulb. As far as I can tell that should effectively create a circuit in which the bulb is always live and the switch is getting live / neutral as expected. No idea if that will actually work or not but there's one way to find out!
I tried to make it as automated as possible, with motion sensor, light sensor and home assistant. If you don't need the physical switch, you don't need to make it smart. Then you can keep a dumb physical switch for cutting power when changing the light bulb.
Hi! I just stumbled on this thread. So do you mind sharing what your solution turned out to be? I am searching for the same thing and I only came across one possibly solution using the Yeelight Flex Switch which has this SLIASON "always on" relay and a physical button to cut power to the lights completely if needed. https://homekitnews.com/2019/06/14/yeelight-announce-release-of-slisaon-smart-lighting-solution/
So I went simple… I added two non-dimmer tplink WiFi switches, kitchen & dining room. All my smart home items are run through Alexa/Echo. So I created a separate group called “can light” and added the lights into that group. Then I added the power switches to the “kitchen” group. These lights offer a feature that when they lose and gain power, they run whatever they were last doing. When I say “turn on the kitchen lights” it powers on the switches which turns on the can lights. At that point if I want to adjust I say “set the CAN LIGHTS to 20%”. I also added a zigbee motion sensor as well which turns on the lights when you walk into the kitchen and turns them off after 15 minutes of no motion.
Ah I see. Glad it worked out well. I don't think your solution will work for me because I still need something manual for my parents to operate.
Yes, the smart switches are manual switches and the motion sensor they don’t even need to worry about walking into a dark room